Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, made the appeal for support at a ministerial event held on the margins of the General Assembly’s high-level session,

“We can and must help the millions of people displaced by the crisis as well as those hosting the displaced across the beleaguered Lake Chad region,” he said.

Lowcock, who is also UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, had visited Niger Republic and Nigeria earlier this month to raise the global profile of the Lake Chad Basin crisis, which is affecting some 17 million people in the region.

In Niger Republic, the number of food-insecure people is around 1.8 million. Some 800,000 children are affected by acute malnutrition and almost 250,000 people are either internally displaced persons, returnees or refugees from Nigeria.

In northeast Nigeria, around 6.5 million people need life-saving assistance. Nearly 5.2 million are severely food-insecure and 450,000 children will suffer from severe acute malnutrition, this year, he added.

There has been an appeal for $1.1 billion for Nigeria and it is currently only 48% funded.

“Together, we have managed to avert famine, but we cannot pause or slow down. We must continue to step up so that the millions of people who are still just a step away from starvation are not allowed to perish,” Lowcock said.